When the current was turned off my father's rigid body suddenly slumped in the chair, and it perhaps occurred to the witnesses that what they had taken for the shuddering spasming
movements of his life for God knows how many seconds was
instead a portrait of electric current, normally invisible, moving
through a field of resistance.

-- E. L. DOCTOROW, The Book of Daniel

The initial plotters of the Fund's strategy-- Heffron, Clark,
and myself--concluded immediately that neither politicians
nor judges would welcome LDF's challenge to capital punishment, for the most prominent characteristic of the legal
apparatus that did the condemning was general refusal to
confront what it was doing. Legislators did not feel responsible for the death penalty because the law rarely required
it; selection of the condemned was left to juries and judges.
Prosecuting attorneys told themselves that they only presented the state's case in the courts. Jurors often believed
that trial judges would correct matters if they acted improperly. The trial judge, on the other hand, felt that the life-
death decision was in the hands of the jury. If he did make
an error in handling the case, surely the appellate courts
would set it right. Courts of review conventionally complained that they had limited power and capacity to upset

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